Far-side Blast

The STEREO (Ahead) spacecraft caught a large coronal mass ejection as it roared away from the Sun and out into space in the opposite direction from Earth (Feb. 26-28, 2011). The bright cloud of particles was one of most substantial eruptions that STEREO has observed. The major blast was followed by a much narrower and less bright one. The video clip covers a little more than two days. In these corongraph images, the Sun is blocked out by the red occulting disk and the size of the Sun is represented by the white circle.